‘SHENANDOAH’ (1965) -Hollywood hokum.

August 15, 2019 Alan Royle 2

    When I first saw this film, I was about eighteen years old and gave it the thumbs up. I thought it was exciting, moving, dramatic and even heart-warming. Being naïve beyond my years, I also thought it was a story well-told and well-acted. The acting still stands up […]

A COUPLE OF HITCHCOCK ‘DUDS’.

March 18, 2019 Alan Royle 10

            Rod Taylor & Tippi Hedren in The Birds (1963) One day, before I die, I would like someone to explain to me just why Alfred Hitchcock’s pitifully weak 1963 ‘thriller’, The Birds, is considered to be a classic by so many so-called cinema experts. The […]

MOVIE TRIVIA – PT107.

February 16, 2019 Alan Royle 3

  Early western star William S. Hart One of the earliest stars of the cinema was a strapping 6’2” former New Yorker who lived for a while during the 1880s in the wild Dakota Territory, a man named William S. Hart. He began studying acting in 1888 and, from 1907 […]

MOVIE TRIVIA – PT73.

October 25, 2018 Alan Royle 1

    Victoria Principal Berry Berenson Anthony Perkins in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972)   Anthony Perkins led a homosexual life until he made The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972). This was the screen debut of the stunning Victoria Principal and she and Perkins were […]

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MOVIE TRIVIA – PT67.

October 13, 2018 Alan Royle 8

  John Agar & Shirley Temple in Fort Apache (1948) At the time they made Fort Apache (1948) together, John Agar and Shirley Temple were husband and wife in real life and, Shirley was pregnant with their first child. Director John Ford took an instant dislike to Shirley, frequently deriding her acting […]

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MOVIE TRIVIA – PT63.

October 5, 2018 Alan Royle 2

Much of the werewolf mythology we accept as gospel these days was actually made up when the 1935 production Werewolf of London was written and filmed. They came up with the notion that being bitten by a werewolf turns you into one; that a werewolf changes under a full moon […]

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MOVIE TRIVIA – PT 62.

October 1, 2018 Alan Royle 3

  Anne Baxter & Montgomery Clift in I Confess (1953) The 1953 Hitchcock drama I Confess starred Montgomery Clift as a Roman Catholic priest. Anne Baxter played his lover. The Republic of Ireland banned the picture in its entirety because Baxter’s character and Clift’s character were in a relationship, even though that […]

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MOVIE TRIVIA – PT41

August 6, 2018 Alan Royle 0

      Ann as Becky Thatcher                                             Ann with Alan Gifford in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey                Ann Gillis played Becky Thatcher in […]

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STARS WHO WENT TO WAR 1939-45 – PT 1.

July 21, 2018 Alan Royle 6

  A great many members of the movie community were quick to enlist and to serve their country in World War Two. Below is a shortened list of actors who served. Not all were movie stars at the time, but David Niven, Tyrone Power, James Stewart, Clark Gable, Lew Ayres, […]

MOVIE TRIVIA – PT28.

July 3, 2018 Alan Royle 0

             Greer Garson & Walter Pidgeon                     Greer & her husband Richard Ney                     Teresa Wright, Ney & Garson in Mrs Miniver I just watched Mrs. Miniver (1942) on television […]